Iraqi Army applicants wait outside the army recruitment center in Basra, 550 km (340 miles) south of Baghdad on April 1, 2008. About 1,000 men from the southern cities of Basra, Amarah, and Nasiriyah trooped to the recruiting center in Basrah to apply to be government soldiers.
Reuters photograph.
Just two days after Muqtada al Sadr declared a cease-fire and withdrew his fighters from the streets of Basra, Baghdad, and elsewhere, the Iraqi Army held a recruiting drive in Basra. Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki stated his intent is to raise over 10,000 police and soldiers to help secure the city. Over 1,000 Iraqis showed up on the first day of recruiting to join the security forces. As a good friend told me the other day: "Since when to people rush to join a losing Army?"
This is not to say the Iraqi military was victorious in Basra. Michael Gordon does a great job of showing the limitations of the Iraqi government and its military's planning and logistical capacity as evidenced by the Basra operation, as well as the Iraqi Army's increasing proficiency in redeploying its forces and using its nascent air forces to resupply the mission. The Basra operation certainly had mixed results, as the Kagans ably pointed out. But it is premature to declare Sadr victorious.
Shouldn't journalist ask the simple question of why Iraqis in the South are flocking to join the Iraqi Army if Sadr dealt it such a decisive defeat? Perhaps the Iraqi perceptions of the operation are different from our own.
